Postcards from No Man’s land

"That’s right. I sometimes get called the godfather of teenage fiction in this country and it is not really true because he was there well before me, tackling all these kinds of subjects in a very different way. They are really quite intellectual, intensely literary novels which are very dense. But they are terribly engaging, entering into the mind of, as he described it himself, “a rather particular kind of boy”. I love the way he deals with those subjects in a much more intellectual way than I would. He really set the ground for teenage fiction in this country. Postcards from No Man’s Land is undoubtedly his best book. He follows two parallel stories – one set in 1944 and the other of Jacob in the present day, going back to honour his grandfather’s death at Arnhem in World War II. He meets up with the family of the people who looked after his grandfather (also called Jacob) during his last days. It is a beautifully crafted novel, as Jacob comes to terms with all sorts of difficult discoveries. Despite its intellectual nature – the characters spend hours just talking about things – it is a joyful story, full of optimism and hope. I re-read it recently and thought it was better than ever. I like the way that teenagers are quite happy to enter into a fantasy-reality mix of scenario which adult fiction finds quite difficult. When I was a kid we didn’t have teenage fiction. There was a lot of horror and a lot of science fiction and sci-fi was always prepared to take a great leap of faith and come up with unbelievable scenarios which could carry you to really interesting places. Teenagers are often prepared to take a bigger leap of faith than adults are. On the other hand young people by and large aren’t going to sit around and wait while you get on with your wonderful prose and fart around trying to do something arty just because they feel they should. You have to do what you do well. Sometimes I feel in some adult fiction that authors manage to pull a great trick on the readers in that if you don’t like it, you aren’t really up to it. Kids aren’t going to fall for that one. No one has told them what they ought to be enjoying."